Where The Free Time Grows

Where The Red Fern Grows
p.1-137
YES! I just finished my SSR assignment for the semester of reading 750 pages. With these pages that I just read, I have 779 pages in the bank. So, we start the story with Billy, a man who is now aged and coming home from work. He sees some dogs attacking another dog, a redbone hound. Billy steps in and saves the outmanned dog. This brings us to a flashback when Billy was a kid. Billy is a young lad who lives on a farm. He wants two coonhounds to hunt and hang out with. One day, he finds a flier in an old camp where it mentions a place to buy pups for $25. He takes it upon himself to save $50 so that he can go buy two. Once he saves the money, he gives it to his grandfather so that he can order them. Billy decides that he can no longer wait for the dogs so he goes to the town and picks them up. On his way home, he buys clothes for his parents. He thinks that they will be mad when he gets back because he left unexpectedly and came back with dogs. On his way back, in the old camp where he found the flier, he notices two names carved into a tree, Dan and Ann. He decides to name the dogs these names. The male was named Old Dan, he was the brave one, and the female, the smart one, was named Little Ann. Billy wants to turn these pups into coonhounds so he tries to train them. His grandpa tells him that he needs a coon hide so that the pups can develop the scent. So, the grandpa helps Billy make a coon trap in which there is a shiny object at the bottom of a can with nails surrounding it angled down so that once the coon's paw goes in, it cannot come back out. Haha, I have actually tried this before at my friend's house, but we never caught anything. I think it is still out there. Anyways, they trapped a coon and killed it. Once the dogs learned the scent, Billy took them hunting. Dan and Ann treed a coon for the first time. This was a big tree so Billy went home to rest and when he came back in the morning, he was proud; Ann and Dan were taking turns guarding the tree throughout the night. Billy cut the tree and with the winds help, it blew down. The dogs killed the coon and then went home proudly with Billy. With this first hide, Billy's mom makes Billy a coonskin hat. Billy then gets excused from all his chores so he can hunt anytime he wants because the price for coon hides went up. However, the coons are getting smarter and are tricking his dogs. His dogs start getting into a little trouble. One night, Dan got stuck in a muskrat hole. Another night, he tried climbing up a tree and was stuck in a hollow entry. Ann fell through the ice after first snow. He manages to save her by fishing her out with the lantern pole after a quick prayer. That is about all I have. It is a great book. I have read it a couple times. This is my third I believe. But, I don't think I will be reading anymore on this term. I just had to get another 100 pages or something. So, read this book. IT IS GREAT.

                                             A coon hat.

The high valued target.

The hunters.

Love Has The Power to Kill

"Their Eyes Were Watching God"
p.147-193
The book is over! I didn't really like it, but I thought the ending was pretty cool. In these pages, a storm brews over the 'Glades. Motor Boat, Janie, and Tea Cake huddle inside the dark house and look at the door, as if watching God and seeing what he is going to do about the problem at hand. They then take it up to flee the muck patch and head for safety. Motor decides that he is going to sleep off the storm at another house but Janie and Tea Cake keep fleeing. Along the way, Janie gets airlifted by the wind into a "lake" and she manages to hold onto a cow's tail as it swims towards the location of Tea Cake. There is a mad dog waiting for an encounter, however, and it decides to attack. Tea Cake jumps in with his knife out and slashes the dog. The dog bites him yet Tea Cake sends the dog to a more restful place. Then the storm calms and they go back home to the 'Glades (Yes, there was more that happened but it isn't that interesting). At their home, Tea Cake comes down with the sickness (Mad Dog Disease) and attacks Janie. She draws the rifle bead upon him and lets a bullet fire. Tea Cake goes down but. Janie is sent to jail but is proven innocent of murder because it was for her own safety. She then holds a funeral to pay her respects. Janie then ends her story to Pheoby about all that happened in her life and they go back to bed. That is the end.

This represents Janie's trial for the accusation of murder.

Got Money?

p116-146
They took off. Tea Cake and Janie ran off to Jacksonville. Apparently they got married? When? I just know that later she said that they were already married. But anyways, Tea Cake leaves one morning and Janie notices her $200 is gone and she worries. She thinks he might have ran off but he comes back later saying that he bought a guitar and went to a party. She starts getting jealous that maybe he is seeing other girls but he assures her he isn't. She is jealous! She has found love. Anyways, Tea Cake takes some money to go gamble and get Janies money back but he comes back with a little over $300 and a couple battle wounds from a knife. He says that he wants to move down by the muck patch or something. Down there is where money is made. In the bean fields and gambling brings in bank. So they move and start working in the field. A girl named Nunkie starts trying to play her game on Tea Cake but Janie will not allow it. She breaks that up in a heartbeat but Tea Cake said she stole his work tickets and he was trying to get him back. They fight but they make up shortly after. Then Janie meets a lady that we come to know as Ms. Turner. She is racist against her own kind but she perceives herself as close to white. She doesn't associate with blacks except Janie because she is pretty light skinned. Tea Cake says that he doesn't want her around his house though so Janie tries to give her the cold shoulder. Sorry that this is so long but there was a lot of info to share. That would be so akward to be around somebody who was racist, especially of her own race!




This is what Tea Cake and Janie did in the muck patch to make money. They picked beans.

This is how Tea Cake made his money. From left to right: Tea Cake, Thurgood Marshall, Jesse James, and Will Ferrell.

Tea Cake Doesn't Pimp.

p. 94-115
Well, Janie is holding down the store while the whole town is basically gone to a ball game. A man comes in and they get to flirting. He goes by the name Tea Cake. They start to grow on eachother and Tea Cake starts coming over to her house. He makes Janie feel young again. They go fishing, hunting, and play checkers. Joe and Logan didn't let her partake in that. But, of course the town is hating on the relationship because Janie is from a higher class than Tea Cake by a long shot. Tea Cake has nothing to his name. But, she likes him and he doesn't mind that she is quite a bit older than him. Sam Watson went to Pheoby, Janie's friend, to try and get her to talk some sense into Janie but it doesn't work. Janie said she likes him and at any given time they might run off. It is about time that Janie doesn't care what everybody else thinks. She needs to do what is right for her, not her grandma, not her husbands, and not the town.

Janie and Tea Cake enjoyed fishing together.

This shows Janie's and Tea Cake's relationship status pretty well.

Death Has Struck

Their Eyes Were Watching God
p.76-93

In these pages, we find out that Joe is around 50 and is physically aging fast. He always talks about how Janie is getting old and one day she gets mad and embarrasses him in his store. Then, after a while, Joe resorts to staying in his bed because of his weakness. Janie notices how close death is and goes in to talk with him about who she is and how she felt about their marriage. After she was done, Joe dies. Janie now manages the store still and she now has many men trying to get with her. She likes the aspect of being single though so she doesn't make a move. She talks to her friend, Pheoby, about all of her problems (one was that people believed that she was going to hurt her husband). That is pretty much all they have talked about in these pages. I do not get what was said during Janie's and Joe's little argument in the store. I think I have an idea but I am not quite sure. I just can imagine that it would be terrible to die mad at somebody, especially your spouse.
This burnt out wick resembles the death of Joe. The flame was his life but now it is all gone.

This represents Janie's and Joe's little argument in the store about how he is always pointing out her flaws.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

p.26-75

I do not really like this book. I do not like the dialogue at all. But so far, Janie has left her husband, Logan Killicks, and ran off with a new man, Joe Starks, and married him. They went down to a place called Maitland. Here, Joe heard that it was a town ran by blacks where their voice could be heard. Upon arrival, he found that none of this was what it was made out to be. So, Joe went and bought land from a man and started to create a town. The people named Joe the mayor. Joe put in a store and a street lamp (they had a big ceremony over that with a barbeque). Joe and Janie experience a little difficulty between eachother it seems like. He is constantly yelling at her in the store when she makes a mistake. A man named Matt has an old mule that doesn't really want to work for him so Joe bought it from him. Joe free'd the mule and fed it. Eventually, it died which it the townspeople pretty hard. Like I said before, I don't really find this story very interesting to me so it is kind of hard to read. But, I do not see how they could create a town. That seems like it would be hard to do, especially if you were back in their time with everything that was going on.

A simple light signifies the creation of a town.

This resembles the death of the well-known mule.

Their Eyes Were Watching God

p.1-25
So, the book starts off with this woman by the name of Janie walking home at night in overalls. All of her neighbors gossip about how her latest husband, Tea Cake, took all her money and ran off with a young girl which is not true according to Ms. Clemons. She was burying Tea Cake but how did he die? Was that in the book? So, Pheoby, Janie's friend, takes Janie supper and they get engaged in a conversation and Janie recalls her childhood. How she would go under a pear tree and think. How her granny would serve as her mother and father. How she kissed a boy named Johnny Taylor and how her granny got mad. How her granny wanted her to marry Logan Killicks. Well, Janie did and she doesn't feel any love for him. She is regretting that move I'd imagine. She must of cared about making her granny happy to marry to another that she didn't love. How unfortunate.

The Black Eyed Peas must have been thinking about Janie's first marriage when writing this song because Janie's love for Logan was definetly not there. It had her granny wondering, "Where is the love?"

Janie's backside was described as it seeming as if she had grapefruits in each back pocket.